Matchsuite.com domain marketplace launched by Ryan Colby

Ryan Colby is the founder and Managing Director of Matchsuite but also founder and CEO of Outcome Brokerage.

Matchsuite is the premium marketplace for business brands. The new markeplace seems to be focusing on brandable domains in the $1k to $5k range.

Here is how the new marketplace is described by Ryan Colby:

“We provide a curated selection of the best brandable domain names for startups. Our marketplace matches startups with naming ideas based on linguistic relevance and current naming trends. Our proprietary recommendation engine is delivered through a simplified browsing interface that acts as a naming algorithm. This identifies the best keyword, invented or premium domains available for sale at a fixed price. We streamline the entire naming process when it comes to securing the best .com within your budget.”

The Matchsuite.com was founded in September 2016 and their LinkedIn page says that they are currently conducting their first Angel Round of financing but I don’t know when that was posted.

About Konstantinos Zournas

Konstantinos studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London and lives in Athens, Greece. He works on domain names, websites and software development. Has been online since 1995 & domaining since 2002.

20 comments

Video shows domainers living in their mother’s basement and seems to think that all domain marketplaces are build for domainers and not startups.
Yet Matchsuite is a domain marketplace selling domainer’s domains.
Oh well…

To clarify, our value proposition is going to be a new type of domain marketplace geared towards the lean startup. Existing domain marketplaces tend to be extremely large and confusing for startups in my experience. We save startups time and money by acting as a domain curator/aggregator. That means we will only list domains for sale that pass all of our quality standards. In addition, we have a “trending” section which shows the crowd opinion on the most popular domains for sale. Our goal is to simplify the domain buying process for startups who need a great name on a limited budget.

Ryan – First, we don’t have basements in California like the Midwest and East coast so the chance of a San Francisco Giants pennant in a basement would be very rare……Secondly, your video depicts domain investors in a very derogatory manner, insulting to be more exact. Credibility has always been an issue when contacting end users and that video hurts our case. Would you care to elaborate about that video?

(My first comment did not go through due to the spotty internet connection in my basement)

Considering that domainers depend on startups to buy their domains, it’s amazing how non-supportive many domainers are toward startups inside their own industry – especially when that startup aims to bring THEM buyers!

Yeah, many projects fail. Yeah, most businesses imitate pre-existing business models. So? Don’t we want people to try? Don’t we want more competition, more options, more people spreading the word and promoting domains for sale?

We’d do well to be less derisive and cynical. Give Colby’s site a chance! If it succeeds, you benefit. If it doesn’t, that’s the way things go. If you were launching a startup for domainers, imagine how many tomatoes people would throw at you the second you stepped on stage! Really, guys, this is 1 of the worst things about domainer culture. Every startup is pronounced dead on arrival. New companies are sneered at rather than supported. Which is why very little progress is made.

As for the video’s depiction of a chubby domainer kid living in a basement and asking $250,000 … That may not be you; but those guys do exist, and you’ve met them.

Keep in mind, the video is meant for mainstream domain buyers. One of their chief pain points is the uncertainty of negotiating with domainers whose price expectations can be crazy or unpredictable at best. Juggling multiple negotiations by email is a hassle, from my clients’ perspective. Colby’s site is designed to remove that hassle, remove the price uncertainty, skip the awkward negotiations with who-knows-who. That’s what the cartoon depicts. Colby’s been around the block a few times and knows how wide the range of domainers is. But his customers – your customers – have different ideas. Don’t be so touchy. Laugh a little!

If it helps you sell domains and makes the process of buying them easier and more professional, then everybody wins.

Joseph – It does nobody in this industry any good to depict a domain investor as someone living in Mom’s basement. It’s as simple as that. It’s insulting to anyone selling a domain name. The message of the video intends for domain investors to be shown in a condescending manner in order to give more credit to his marketplace. Buy from him or buy from a basement dweller, that is the message to end users. It is negative advertising at the expense of all domain investors. I wish him well and the best of luck, unfortunately that comes at the expense of many domain sellers.

Picture a late-night infomercial. First they show you someone struggling to chop carrots the old-fashioned way with a knife. He grimaces. He groans. He wipes sweat from his brow. Hell, he’s lucky he doesn’t chop his fingers off! Then … PRESTO! Introducing the all-new supercalifragilisticexpialidocious life-transforming deluxe Carrot Chopper Pro™.

Do we really believe cutting carrots with a knife is a life-threatening ordeal? No. We know they’re exaggerating the contrast between alternatives. Same here. On the 1 hand, there’s the ease and simplicity of the new solution. On the other, the unpleasantness of negotiation with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

Colby doesn’t take that literally. His customers don’t take it literally. I don’t take it literally. Why take it literally, since it’s offensive where no offense was intended? To the extent that Colby’s market place gives buyers an easy way to buy and domainers an easy way to sell, then buyers learn to value domains and domain owners MORE not less.

There are so many genuinely offensive, really dangerous things in this world. Let’s pick our battles more judiciously. Colby has been working with domainers for years, and he’s not trying to insult anybody.

It is great if you have your own inventory, but these sites preying on 30% commissions need to go.

There is no reason a parking page, with a buy link can’t do the same thing, often times which it does.

Use the 30% padding to help seal the difficult deal. One of the advantages of the internet is to get rid of the fat cat middle man. Use it to your advantage, this is a cheap script I have seen sell, no big deal here.

A dozen or so guys have set these kind of sites up, it all depends on your own portfolio which will bring the traffic there.

I’m not a fan of those sites myself and don’t use them. Agree that 30% commissions are excessive. And the exclusivity requirement at BrandBucket is like voluntarily sawing off one’s own legs.

But it’s not altogether true that “it all depends on your own portfolio which will bring the traffic there”. BrandBucket does spend some of its fat commissions and listing fees on marketing their own site, which brings in buyers. Whether it’s worthwhile or not for domainers to give up so much in order to avail themselves of that extra promotion is debatable. As for Ryan Colby’s project, he’s mainly a broker. Don’t know that he has a portfolio of his own. He definitely does spend time recruiting end-user buyers, since that’s how a broker makes his living. Whatever buyers Colby brings to the table, they’re not part of the traffic you mention.

By saying this, I’m not endorsing Colby or his site. Just pointing out that there is another source of buyer inquiries, apart from the domains themselves. Those are leads generated by the market place itself, a result of its own advertising, return customers, etc. Every market place of any standing enjoys some of that traffic – Sedo, GoDaddy, Afternic, NameJet, BrandBucket, as well as established brokers with clients who’ve done business with them already. Colby does have such clients. I’ve sold through him before.

We have to guess and try to quantify the leads that come to us through the market places, independent of the leads our domains generate purely on their own. For some market places, this benefit isn’t worth the commission or the exclusivity. But we can’t dismiss the benefit altogether. It’s a tradeoff.

I agree with Joseph Peterson. People are being too sensitive. There are many more important fights out there to fight. At least Ryan is trying to do something to help domainers sell their domains. All that matters to me is getting higher prices for my domains. I don’t care how I am depicted. If his video helps me sell my domains (via his marketplace), I am all for it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Ryan promotes more expensive domain names for sale as well. After all, that’s what he already does as a broker, selling domains well north of $5k.

Presumably he meets buyers all the time who do recognize the value in premium domains but who aren’t prepared to spend more than $5k. That’s a pretty common situation. So if his new site is meant to address those needs, then it makes sense to put together a lot of inventory in the price range where it sells fastest.

Doesn’t mean Ryan Colby isn’t simultaneously selling more expensive stuff. He might well advertise domains priced above $5k through that site too. If he’s brokering a domain for $25k or $250k, then he’d want to tell people. So I think there’s no danger of him giving them the impression that domains aren’t worth a lot.